


20 Stories Mereel Tells Other People & 10 He Tells Himself

by Izzerslololol



Series: Mereel and the Galaxy [6]
Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: Republic Commando Series - Karen Traviss, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brotherhood, Brothers, Clones, Gen, Mando'a
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:27:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzerslololol/pseuds/Izzerslololol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gathering intel is an art, as is infiltration, and saying, or doing, just the right thing to be invited into the target organization with open arms. Other times, knowing the right thing to offer, or withhold, is the difference between life and death. </p>
<p>ARC N-7 is something of a master.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Love Scene

**Author's Note:**

> This is an experiment in storytelling, for me. It's been a while. To be updated periodically, whenever I get the time.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hook, line, and sinker.

 

A man could be careful, or he could be _dini’la_. Mereel hadn’t felt like being the former, rarely did, but a man couldn’t push a long op hoping to shake loose some delicate information. Sharing took time, trust took give and take. Took knowing the contact’s weak point and manipulating it to his advantage.

And, well. Raising rank in muddled gang hierarchy took a bit of _all-of-the-above_. And luck.

But Mereel felt lucky. He usually did.

“Corner pocket,” the Mirialan contact—a man by the name of Oren—cooed just over the polished edge of a long wooden cue, head tucked low and eye following the angle of the potential shot. The holographic spheres on the table glowed and dusted his face and upper body in pale blue light, throwing him in sharp contrast to the hazy light from above. The Corellian billiards game wasn’t Mereel’s first choice, but the contact insisted—and once the basic principles were revealed to him, the Null even found it _fun_. But, for the moment, the game waited on the contact. Oren took his time, lined up his shots, and made them only when he was good and ready. Mereel respected that.

“You were saying?” Oren prompted.

“You want me to continue before or after you take your shot?” The Null leaned back, balanced his hard chair—plasteel, cushions torn off, broken ties knotted around the bare barred skeleton—on its two hind legs. “Because I can wait.”

He made a show of eying the rest of the in-house games. The warehouse had the usual structural strengths and weakness: stresscrete floor, stained in places and obscured by a thick layer of dust, or dirt, which pointed to a quick build meant for temporary use and pushed way past its use-by date. Rattling pipes and exposed wiring webbed the ceiling and spidered down the major load-bearing walls. Rusted sconces hung in sporadic lines throughout, hooked up to the ceiling grid and cast low-illumination in cones on the thick tables beneath them.

Each bulb illuminated a table, and he counted thirteen tables. One to four people each, on a crowded night. This night, though, had a maximum of ten people, if that.

“Gives me something else to concentrate on,” the Mirialan murmured. “Instead of the 200 creds down in your favor.”

Mereel smiled and knotted his hands behind his head with one foot on the ground. The other twitched every couple of seconds, a bad habit _Rel Kelodi_ picked up in Separatist space.

The man was dead now, but Mereel fit into the slot he left behind well enough not to raise any red flags.

“Never know, this might just be the shot to make a profit,” Mereel supplied. “Anyway.”

All four legs of his chair _clack_ ed down on the stresscrete.

“So there I was, bleeding out. Shatter slug in my gut. Right?” Mereel paused, fought the uncomfortable knot that formed in his chest, and then continued in the way he knew Rel Kelodi had spoken when he was still alive. “I still had my blaster, no way I’d ever let her go. Got her while on the job in Nar Shaddaa, when everything else went to _poodoo_ and I had to smuggle myself out in a fruit container.”

“Fruit container?” Oren laughed.

“Right. It’s a funny story—”

“Later.” He interrupted. “What about the girl?”

“I’m getting to that.” Mereel laced his hands together in his lap. “All right. So I had the stims in my system, painkillers kickin’ in in less than a minute, and blaster still in hand. That’s when the girl showed up, outta nowhere. No idea how she found me. Didn’t tell her what I was doin’, where I was goin’. Maybe she followed me. I don’t know.”

“Lucky.”

Mereel swallowed. His left heel tapped nervously against the floor.

“Never said this was a good story.”

Oren blinked and took his eyes off the ball. His grip momentarily slackened on the cue. There it was: the weak point. There were rumors, of course, and Mereel wasn’t sure if the intel on Oren _before_ he became Oren was any good, but it looked as if he gut was right this time around.

“So she came in. Stepped over the other guys on the floor. Still warm, too. Didn’t even look phased, like dead bodies and blood everywhere’s something everyone’s used to.”

Mereel let a laugh slip and stared at the floor through his interlaced hands; stared like it had an answer for him, if he looked hard enough through the dust and the grime.  
Of course, it was fiction. Mostly.

“That’s when I realized she was hiding something from _me_ too. But it didn’t matter, because without help I was dead, and more were coming for me, and _she_ beat them to it. So she got down on one knee over me, one hand over my bloody one on my gut, and looked me right in the eye.”

“’You’ve been lyin’ to me, Rel,’ she says. ‘But that’s okay. I’m here to get you out.’ Now this.”

Mereel clicked his teeth together.

“This is no good, right? So I grabbed her hand with the other one. I let go of the blaster, you understand. I let go of the greatest thing I own, I let go because this girl came out of nowhere and she had _no idea_ what kind of _poodoo_ she waded into. And I tell her, ‘ _Pateesa_. You gotta get out of here. There are a lot of _Pubs_ coming round the corner, and even without this metal in my gut I can’t handle them all.’”

“And she just.” He chuckled, careful to hold on to the thread that toed between laughter and despair it. He’d spent enough days on that line to summon that feeling at will and feed it into his voice. “Smiled at me. Like she knew something I didn’t. And she left one hand between mine and touched my face. And she said, ‘I was gonna make you settle. Find a way and make it so, but now I won’t get the chance.’”

“And then. Her forehead touches mine. And her eyes close and she’s soft. And warm. And it’s nothin’ like the stints we had dancin’ around each other for a month. It’s _better_. It lasts forever and it’s over in a second and her hands are out of mine, my blaster’s in her grip and she’s gone out the door.”

“What happened next?”

Mereel silently counted to up to three. Four. Five.

“I’m here, and she’s not.” He pulled his fingers apart and dragged one palm over his face while the other settled over the knot of scar-tissue on his gut. The injury was real. “I never did find another good reason to settle.”

The rest of the story though? Not so much. But the Mirialan didn’t need to know that.

“Corner pocket,” Oren hushed again in a breath over the polished cue.

The hide jacket he wore did little to disguise the ripple of muscles involved in the careful position of his body, the cue, and its point aimed off-center of the solid white holographic ball seated on the field of green fabric. The cue stretched forward, just shy of brushing the curved surface of the ball, halted, pulled back, and repeated the motion.

The contact’s inhale held a slight shake to it, imperceptible to anyone else.

On the exhale the cue shot forward. The ball exploded out, rebounded off one of Mereel’s solid-colored set and knocked it closer to a pocket. It kept going, smacked one of Oren’s stripes. Then it bounced, hit the edge of the table, and flew off the side and out-of-bounds in a cloud of blue sparks.

“ _Frack_ ,” Oren cursed.

Mereel feigned digging his fingers into his eyes and wiped them on his pants. Then he rose.

“I guess that means I win.” He extended a hand to the other man. “Should’ve waited ‘til after you made the shot.”

Oren settled the cue diagonally on the table, and eyed Mereel’s hand. Looked at his face. Back to the hand.

“Maybe.” He stepped forward and took Mereel’s hand between both of his and shook twice, firm. “Now, about the other matter…”

Oren pulled back and looked him dead in the eye.

“I’d be willing to show you around. If you’re still up for it.”

“Always up to ruin Pubs good day,” Mereel dropped, slow, and cracked on the last word.

“Does it help?”

“What?” The question, from Oren, was unexpected. He fought against the urge to shuffle his weight and instead tapped his left heel against the floor when it was clear he had no intention of elaborating.

He tapped his heel again. The implication was clear enough: Oren meant more than just interference. _Killing Pubs_ —or in Mereel's case, Seps—hung in the air unsaid.

Unless a Kaminoan whistled their high-pitched scream, beyond human hearing, under his sight? He kept killing compartmentalized and separated, as part of what he was _good_ at, part of the job. Seps killed his brothers on the field, and dispatching major players held some satisfaction, but only _gihaal_ could satisfy the gaping chasm left by the early years before the Clone Wars. Before _Kal’buir_.

How much could he reveal? A lie wouldn’t show, but he needed the win. His gut said go with the truth, and he tended to follow his gut.

“No,” he answered, honestly. Oren studied him. Mereel could hear the artificial _clack_ of the other patrons’ games echo in the dark. The contact’s eyes dropped, sized him up, and seemed satisfied.

“Come on,” Oren said. “Let’s go introduce you to a friend of mine. He’ll set you up.”

 _Kandosii._ Maybe it wouldn’t be such a long op after all.

 


	2. A Death Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little over a month into the Clone Wars and ARC N-7 still wasn't used to seeing a brother off.

Encountering skirmishes between sides never wildly sat right with Mereel. He was, as he had been told and had himself said, terrible at following orders (unless from _vode,_ or _Kal’buir_ , but he wasn’t with them, was he?). He excelled at espionage, preferred it even, and that was for a reason.

But stumbled onto a battlefield he _did_ , and with an injury that needed immediate medical attention. And a busted comm.

 _Not your best day, Mer’ika_. Tomorrow will be better.

The tall builds of Lianna came to an abrupt end where the border wild of man-made field and fauna started—in varying colors of gray to blue to violet with splashes of yellow.

The blood loss had him a little loopy. A little light-headed. A little _I don’t remember where I parked my speeder._

And by park he really meant crash. Not that it made a huge difference.

The battle raged across buildings and dominated the air above. Republic forces held their ground against the siege from the skies. The Null stuck tight to the white claycrete walls and tried to re-orient himself. Medical manuals pointed to a three-hour window before he was in serious _osik._ Two hours of wandering left before the time to worry came.

That was plenty.

He turned onto what he _thought_ was a small street to lead to an underpass and down to the closest medcenter. Instead, it was the main traffic lane of the multi-level ecumenopolis—and what remained of a failing defense. He lost his footing. His gut pulled down sharp. White pain. Dead and dying on this level. Clone troopers. Up above: more troopers. A Jedi. Young, so he estimated a Commander, maybe.

His sense of direction and the name of the General deployed to this planet lost to the confusion of stims, blood loss, and an empty stomach. _Shab._ Three hours was a very _wrong_ estimation _._

But he didn’t need a name. The strategy was a familiar one—and hated for what it needed the troopers to do. Sacrifice a platoon. Maybe two. Or four out of six.

Or, hey. Why not a whole company. He’d seen it on Geonosis, a little over a month before.

 _Can’t do anything about it from here._ Didn’t stop him from being angry. Painkillers didn’t help to stem the tide of—

Blaster fire cracked overhead. Chipped claycrete rained down. _Ping._

Explosion. Screaming.

Mereel dove into a roll.

A chunk of the overpass above crashed into the space he previously stood. Dust choked the air and blotted out the sky. Air strikes? No. It hadn’t sounded like one. IED. Mortar maybe.

His ears rung. The right felt a little wet, dripping something. He couldn’t be sure. But through the muffled ringing in his drums his suit pinged a life nearby.

From under the debris.

Mereel’s heart sank and he fought the urge to run to the broken rock and start digging. His gut burned and his heart said _it might be a brother._

_Shab._

Mereel limped over to the pile. The dust hung high in the air, blotting out the harsh light of the sun through the clear day. The broken claycrete cut into the tips of his fingers but he _hauled_ hard and dropped the largest rock he could lift to the side. Underneath, white armor with olive green designation—Trooper Sergeant—and a broken black visor stared up at him. A gloved hand reached up, and he grasped it.

“Sir. What?” The trooper’s voice breached the split of the helmet. Blood, everywhere. “You… shouldn’t. I’m not. It’s…”

“I’m going to see you off, Sergeant.” Mereel knelt down, back and sides tucked up against the stone walls and inside its shadow. Not that it mattered—the dust hadn’t cleared.

 _Risky._ He stopped caring.

“What’s your name, Sergeant?”

“CS-2124.” He shifted, and let out a soft hiss of pain. The grip on Mereel’s gauntlet tightened. “Temper.”

“Temper,” Mereel spoke softly. “I’ll give you something for the pain. I can’t reach your dispensers.”

“Thank you. El-tee.” The trooper was nearly as pale as his armor by then. “But. Ah. Don’t think. I’ll be needing it.”

With the fire raining down across the overpass above, it was hard for Mereel to tell when it happened. But after another explosion rocked the sky, and blaster bolts lit up the dust and smoke in brilliant reds and blues, the Sergeant’s body ceased his shaking, and the grip on his hand slackened.

“Temper?” he asked, and leaned forward despite knowing there’d be no response. “CS Two One Two Four?”

Nothing.

“ _Ni partayli,_ ” he hushed over the helmet. “ _Gar darasuum._ ”

Mereel reached between the shattered armor and pulled the identification tag from just under the collar, then tucked it away in an interior pocket. He eased back on his haunches and, carefully, pried his fingers open from his grip on the trooper’s gauntlet. The shiv in his own ejected with a _shu-shuk._

 _Sorry, Temper. I just need to borrow this for a while…_ He cut away the under armor so he could slide Temper’s gauntlet from his hand. He’d need the working comm if he was going to make it out of the hot zone.

* * *

The door to the small transport’s medbay hissed open and in walked a familiar face.

“ _Vor entye, ner vod,_ ” Mereel breathed.

Kom’rk shook his head and tapped closed the door behind him. He walked in careful steps, one in front of the other as he crossed the short distance with the grace of a tightrope dancer.

“ _Naas._ You’re lucky I was still in-system.” Kom’rk reprimanded, though the edge sorely absent in his tone. “What happened?”

Mereel took in a long gulp of air through his nostrils, held it, and slowly let it out. Then he smiled and reached out, pulling Kom’rk close.

“I pushed too many buttons,” he winked. “And then I got a bit sidetracked by all the fireworks. Even had to park my speeder so I could admire them a little better.”

“ _Cuyi haatla._ This is serious.” Kom’rk frowned, then jabbed at the stitched-up hole in Mereel’s abdomen.

“ _Ori—_ ” he gasped. Pain flared up, even despite the stims in his system. “ _Ori’haat._ In a manner of speaking.”

Kom’rk settled-in, half on the cot beside Mereel with legs propped up on a nearby stool. Then he reached down and dropped the trooper ident-tag on the sheet over his lap. “Talk to me.”

Mereel eyed the tag, felt the weight on the sheet. “Okay.” He sighed. “So I’d just slipped out of a hairy situation with data in hand when…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Glossary**  
>  _shab_ \- expletive  
>  _ni partayli gar darasuum_ \- last section of a mando'a phrase for daily remembrance of those passed on, translates to "I remember you, so you are eternal"  
>  _vor'entye_ \- thank you  
>  _ner vod_ \- my brother  
>  _naas_ \- it's nothing, no problem  
>  _cuyi haatla_ \- (I'm) being serious  
>  _ori'haat_ \- no bull, I swear


	3. A Scene You've Always Wanted To Write

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the man's bravery will be lost to the shadows, because some Jedi General cannot accept free thinking and independence from the clones who were promised to be obedient.

Access Granted.  
Welcome back N-7, _Gift to the Galaxy._  
Input Command.  
Searching …  
Comm-log Found  
Encrypt Data?  
Confirm?  
Saving …  
Log Saved.  
\- - - - -

 

« 13:09:17 »

 **To:** Purple [[ **03:46** ]]  
 **Sender:** Blue

Waiting for other boot to drop.  
LAAT/i’s a little loud for my liking. Announces arrival to the party. Infantry should requisition some of ours.  
Pushed up main residential block. First recon didn’t gather anything we don’t already know.  
Clone Sergeant volunteered to accompany me for thorough recon of the boulevard. Extra hand can help me free up some airspace. Cash a few checks. Left a present for you. Signal’s on.

 

 **To:** Blue [[ **04:22** ]]  
 **Sender:** Purple

F&F - found and forwarded to Gray.  
Make it quick. Tinnies had the same idea. They’re moving to fortify their position.  
 _K’oyacyi._

**To:** Purple [[ **04:54** ]]  
 **Sender:** Blue

Casualties. Shoulder’s out. CS took out two AAT-1s solo, but knocked around in second blast. Stabilized him.  
CS determined forward O.P. location. Good eye on that one. Need support ASAP.  
Left another present.

 

 **To:** Blue [[ **07:50** ]]  
 **Sender:** Purple

Main transit hub taken.  
F&F. Thanks for update. Med-evac inbound. Sit tight.

 

 **To:** Purple [[ **08:01** ]]  
 **Sender:** Blue

Friendlies here. O.P. secured. CS on medevac.  
I sourced a ride. Circling back to the RV point.  
Recommend award for CS on recovery.

 

 **To:** Blue [[ **08:11** ]]  
 **Sender:** Purple

General displeased with deviation from plan and individualized thinking. Suggest you take full cred in report, _Wizard_ can’t touch you through Zey. Req CS transfer to Spec-Ops?

 

 **To:** Purple [[ **08:13** ]]  
 **Sender:** Blue

Noted. Neg on CS, man’s attached to his squad. I’ll send him some cookies and a thank you card.

 

\- - - - -  
Save Entry?  
Confirm?  
Save Complete.  
Input Inquiry.  
Power Down Initiated.  
Good Bye N-7. _Oya manda._


	4. A War Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some wounds heal, and some scars linger.

Care packages couldn’t deliver themselves. That was the philosophy Mereel followed to the greatest of details. For all his skill in solo operations—and the freedoms that fact allowed him—he felt the need to return to the fold at the earliest of moments, if only to make sure even the _vode_ whose names he would never know were treated well.

He thought, as a force of habit, he had seen the worst the galaxy had to offer—after all, nothing could quite match up to the first two years of his life after decant with his brothers on Kamino.

But then there was Esseles.

And nothing he saw, did, or truly knew, prepared him for the sheer _clusterfuck_ that was the battle of Esseles, and he never shared with anyone what went on where he landed—hell, before his boots even hit atmo. Of course, Jaing, and Kom’rk—and now Fi—knew he’d been there, but that’s where the list of in-the-know ended.

And years later, he would still sometimes have dreams. Still have slow crawling moments of intense awareness of the nothing that was happening around him, and he would settle and wait for it to pass.

His luck at keeping things hidden eventually ran out, and he had an episode in the middle of the clan home, with no one present … save the small child who couldn’t comprehend why Mereel lay on the floor, one ear to the ground and motionless.

But unlike the foolishness of children, Venku seemed to sense Mereel’s wild, misplaced, fear—and crouched down beside him.

Outside of his body, Mereel could only struggle to retain the barest grip on himself. He felt ready to pass out—or worse, black out—and he hated that feeling more than any other, right up there past torture and other unmentionable things.

But his body refused to respond all the same, and he rallied against his fear-stricken paralysis for several long seconds. The white noise in his ears subsided enough for him to wrest control and speak.

“I need my helmet, Kad’ika,” Mereel croaked after a long, drawn out moment. Though he knew, on a distant, disconnected plane of logic, that there were no enemies outside and he needn’t his one _thing_ to keep him safe, the wild gripping panic lurked under the surface. “Please retrieve it for _ba’vodu.”_

And Kad, bless his young heart, crawled over the floor—keeping low, below the mortar line.

_But there are no mortars here._

“There are no mortars here.” But saying it wouldn’t change the hollow memory, stop the cold adrenaline that clenched his heart—vivid and bright and _real—_ and curse his fantastic genetically engineered brain that recreated long-dead moments in crystal clarity again and again and _again._

He just had to ride it through. Breathe and ride it through.

Until Kad came back, head below the mortar line, helmet in his tiny hands, and his world went dark as the _buy’ce_ crossed his eyes. The colors winked to life as his HUD responded to his biorhythm signatures, scanning his vitals and running the sim that would bring him comfort and set him back down on Kyrimorut.

“Where are they?”

Venku’s hands on either side of his _buy’ce_ and staring into his visor with curious eyes. “Why can you see them?”

“No one’s here, Venku,” he said. “They’re not real. It’s all in my head.”

“But they’re scaring you,” Venku said.

“They are.”

“Why?”

“Because a bad thing happened a long time ago, and _ba’vodu_ made a lot of mistakes he can’t ever forget.”

The sim finished and his heart rate returned to normal. He lay there for another minute, hands unfreezing enough to tap small patterns on the floor.

And a quiet thing happened that he hadn’t expected.

Venku crawled over to him, slipped his tiny arms around his chest, and laid a hug against him. Mereel waited for him to let go.

Moments passed when he realized he wouldn’t—or couldn’t, as he had fallen asleep.

The urge to laugh came and went as he wrapped his arms around the child. The back of his head rested on the floor, and he counted the ripples in the ceiling until the first of many clan members returned home.


End file.
